Evaluation Verification Validation and Assurance for Architectures

This preprint develops a bounded architecture for evaluating, verifying, validating, and assuring claims about architectures. It separates evaluation as criterion-relative judgment, verification as conformance testing, validation as adequacy for a declared intended use and context, and assurance as a structured, defeasible justification for a bounded decision. It introduces an evaluation context, validation envelope, claim-evidence assurance graph, uncertainty and defeater controls, lifecycle gates, and a cross-domain application template while preserving the distinction between an architecture and its descriptions. The manuscript is an integrated, literature-grounded Stage 1.5 framework with a maximum Architecture Science claim status of CS-2. It advances five provisional and falsifiable research propositions. It does not report an AS-05-specific empirical validation campaign, formal proof, independent replication, certification, universal metric, context-free ranking, guarantee of safety or success, or candidate or mature law. The accompanying Supporting Constitutional and Scientific Record preserves claim, notation, limitation, negative-control, objection, bibliography, provenance, and successor controls. Human-AI collaboration is disclosed as process provenance and is not empirical evidence or independent peer review.